SLOTBACK SLOG: THE WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS

Yes, the Canadian Football League season kicks off on Friday. To ensure that you don't get flagged for a time-count violation (that's Canadian for "delay of game"), Out of Left Field has slapped together -- and I do mean slapped -- some team capsules for upcoming season. As part of its contribution to the fight to end Eastern bias within our lifetime, we're starting on the West Coast and working our way east amid various hilarious highjinks, much like those crazy kids in National Lampoon's Going The Distance. Presenting: The fightin' Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS
2005 record: 5-13, missed playoffs
Head coach: Doug Berry
Who looks kind of like: Jack Lemmon's character in Glengarry Glen Ross, who was the inspiration for Gil on The Simpsons. ("Dammit, Doug, that looked like a pass completion! Ooh!")
Famous alumni: Dieter Brock, Sean Salisbury.
Hey, didn't you used to play for? .... : Wideout Quentin McCord is a former Atlanta Falcon.
No, that's really his name: OL Dan Goodspeed (who, ironically, plays on the line)
Trivial trivia: The Bombers boast two of the only remaining Carleton Ravens in the CFL in DE Cameron Legault and WR Darryl Ray. (Ray was a member of Carleton's final team in 1998 before finishing his collegiate career at the U of Ottawa.)
Guy who's been there forever: K Troy Westwood
Key off-season pickups: OL Ibrahim (Obby) Khan, RB Henri Childs
CanCon: DE Tom Canada, his U.S. passport be damned.

After a season in which it set a league record with 8,249 total yards allowed, the Bombers made a coaching change, replacing Jim Daley and with Doug Berry.

Berry's specialty is offence. Go figure.

So the Bombers are coming off a second straight out-of-the-playoffs disaster of a season, and worse yet, the Ottawa gong show has forced them to move into the East Division, meaning fewer games against their natural Prairie rivals.

Such is the angst of the Manitoban. Not quite East, not quite West, taunted by both the slick types in Ontario who appropriated the "central Canada" tag for themselves and the hayseeds in Saskatchewan who love to joke the best thing coming out of Manitoba is the Trans-Canada Highway.

It could be a long year in Winterpeg, but at least it will be wacky. Last Saturday, the Bombers released punter Bryan Claybourn, but as the Winnipeg Sun noted this week, Berry said he planned "all along" to have the American rookie handle the punting. (What's the CFL coming to when they sign an American to do nothing but punt -- Bob Cameron never would have stood for this!)

The Bombers are entering Year 3 of what shapes up as a 10-year quest to find a quarterback the equal of Khari Jones, who was run out of town midway through '04. Kevin Glenn isn't great, but he's the best Winnipeg has, and the personnel on offence isn't half bad, with 2005 rushing champion Charles Roberts and slotback Milt Stegall, who's closing in on the league's career touchdown record. Albert Johnson III has rejoined the receiving corps after bouncing around the NFL and NFL Europe for the past five years, and the O-line, one of Berry's areas of expertise was shored up when Ibrahim Khan and Val St. Germain were added through the Ottawa dispersal draft.

Defensively, there's nowhere to go but up. Winnipeg added a couple of veterans, LB Barrin Simpson and DB Kelly Malveaux, but both players' best days are probably behind them. Not surprisingly, after last season, there's a lot of new faces on this side of the ball, including new co-ordinator Greg Marshall.

Troy Westwood is a Winnipeg institution as the Bombers kicker, and Johnson has replaced the departed Keith Stokes as the primary return guy.

The last word goes to the new coach, Berry, who said this week, "I’d rather have a fan that is critical rather than no fan at all."

It looks he's going to get that wish.

Bottom line: Even in the East, seven wins looks like a tall order for these Bombers.

(West Division capsules: B.C. Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos, Saskatchewan Roughriders.)